Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought [Hardcover]

Langdon Winner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1977

The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the "data" in the world will make no difference. ;From the Introduction

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Readers interested in technology, politics, and social change will find "Autonomous Technology" a useful guide and a thoughtful inquiry into the relationship between technology and society. In it, Winner outlines the paradoxes of technological development, the images of alienation and liberation evoked by machines, and he assesses the historical conditions underlying the exponential growth of technology. Winner brings together the ideas of several gifted observers of industrial society, among them Karl Marx, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marcuse, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Hannah Arendt, pointing up the importance (and shortcomings) of their thinking on technological and technocratic development. In asking the question, What have we created?, Winner evokes the myths of Frankenstein and Prometheus to illustrate the possibility that we may all face a permanent bondage to our own inventions. To answer the question, What is to be done about what we have created?, Winner explores --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Langdon Winner is the Thomas Phelan Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: MIT Press; 1st edition (May 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026223078X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262230780
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #762,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb intro to politics of technology, June 23, 2009

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Jesse Taylor (North Idaho) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Paperback)

This book is simply the best introduction to the philosophy and politics of technology. No competition.

Winner discusses a wide range of literature on the subject, from authors such as Jacques Ellul, Marx, Heidegger, and others. He uses these ideas as a springboard to cover many of the ideas they brought up with much more depth and clarity.

Some of the most interesting ideas discussed include (amongst others):

* "Reverse adaptation" -- when technologies force us to modify our ends/goals/purposes in order to meet the needs of our means/tools/techniques

* "Technological imperative" -- how technology changes the structure of human societies, even before they have been put into use (e.g. in order to create an environment conducive to their use)

* "Neutrality" -- Winner smashes the myth of tools being "neutral" (the idea that tools can't be inherently good or bad, and that only the way they are *used* can be good/bad)

Don't be put off by the fact that the book was originally published back in the 1970s -- the ideas are every bit as applicable (much more so actually...) today as they were then.

Highly recommended.